Dueling petitions on health care collect thousands of signatures

In a sign of the heightened emotions surrounding the health-care debate, competing petitions supporting and opposing Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the federal health-care bill have each collected thousands of names in just a few days.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party of Virginia put out a letter to supporters this morning indicating that more than 8,300 people signed the party's petition opposing Cuccinelli's lawsuit since they began circulating it online Wednesday.

Online petitions tend to be more a measure of how effectively the petitioning organization uses social media and other Internet tools to publicize the petition. But the number of names on both pages is a sign of the passion surrounding the issue.